Get It 18

The cage has a weight. Not metaphorical—actual, physical, a compression behind my sternum that tightens every time I inhale, like breathing through a straw someone keeps pinching shut.

I make it to the academy by telling my legs they’re fine, my hands they’re steady, my lungs they’re getting enough air. A whole morning of lying to my own body.

“Sense the attack before you see it,” Graves barks down the line during advanced combat drill. “Your wolf reads the room—trust the instinct.”

The first two rounds I perform beautifully. A strike from behind connects and I stumble forward, selling the impact, letting the bruise form where it belongs on a girl with no supernatural reflexes.

Third round. Graves signals the assistant instructor, who circles wide behind the formation. My wolf throws herself against the cage so hard my vision strobes gold, and my body drops left before my brain can override it.

The strike whistles through empty air. I come up in a defensive crouch that belongs to a trained fighter, not a girl who places thirty-first, and the mat goes quiet.

Three students have stopped mid-drill, doing math that doesn’t add up. On the sideline, Mina tilts her chin, watching me the way you’d watch a card trick you’re about to figure out.

I straighten and grab my water bottle. “Lucky flinch—someone’s bag hit the floor behind me.” Nobody’s bag hit the floor, but I drink like my throat isn’t closing around the lie.

Graves moves the class forward without comment. The bell rings and I’m halfway to the door when Mina’s perfume arrives at my shoulder.

“That was impressive.” She falls into step beside me, voice light and conversational. “The blind dodge—I’ve seen second-year wolves miss that drill.”

“Adrenaline.” I keep my eyes forward and my pace even. “Bodies do weird things under stress.”

“Such sharp reflexes for someone without a wolf.” Her smile widens, warm and surgical. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve been hiding something interesting under all that mediocrity.”

My bag strap digs into my shoulder where my grip has tightened around it. “I’m not hiding anything, Mina. Some people are just lucky.”

“Lucky.” She tastes the word like she’s checking it for lies. “Right—and I’m sure that’s all it is.”

“Private sessions with Max, maybe?” She tilts her head, eyes running over my face like she’s building a case. “He does love a project.”

“Max and I don’t train together.” The lie tastes like copper, smooth from years of practice. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh, I’m not disappointed.” She pats my arm with the tenderness of a woman filing evidence. “Just curious—you know how I get.”

I know exactly how she gets—thorough, relentless, and well-connected enough to turn a dodge on a training mat into a full investigation.

“Forget I said anything.” She peels away toward her circle with a breezy wave. The smile she leaves behind tells me she’ll forget nothing, ever—I should send a gift basket.

The library is empty at four—the far table behind the reserve stacks where the light is bad and the company is nonexistent. I press my forehead to the textbook and breathe through the tremor in my hands.

His shadow crosses the table before his voice does. Max drops into the chair across from me, and every nerve fires at once—my hands going still against the page.

He doesn’t ask how I am—he can see the answer in the hollows under my eyes. “I’ve been looking into some things,” he says, voice low enough for the shelves to swallow. “Your mother’s pack registration and background records.”

“You’ve been—” My fingers curl against the textbook until the page wrinkles. “What kind of things?”

“The origin pack listed on her file—I can’t find it.” He holds my gaze with a steadiness worse than urgency. “Not disbanded, not merged—it doesn’t exist in any inter-pack registry.”

“Maybe the records are incomplete.” My mouth shapes the deflection while my ribs compress around my lungs. “Old files get lost all the time, Max.”

“I’ve checked three separate databases.” He leans forward, elbows on the table, close enough that his warmth reaches me. “The pack your mother claims to come from was never there.”

“Stop.” The word comes out jagged, and my nails find my palms under the table. “You need to stop digging into this.”

“Tell me why.” He doesn’t lean back, doesn’t blink, doesn’t give me the single inch I need to breathe.

“Because you don’t understand what you’re pulling at.” My throat works around each syllable like swallowing something jagged. “If you keep going, you won’t find answers—you’ll find something that buries both of us.”

“Buries us how?” His fingers are flat on the table, six inches from mine. “Give me one real answer and I’ll consider it.”

“I can’t give you a real answer—that’s the whole point.” My nails dig deeper into my palms inside my fists. “The truth isn’t mine to hand over.”

“Then whose is it?” He searches my face, and underneath the control there’s something raw. “Because whoever’s holding it is hurting you, and I can see it happening.”

“You see what you want to see.” I pull my hands into my lap where the tremor is hidden by the table’s edge. “I’m fine, Max.”

“You dodged a blind strike today that half the wolves missed.” His voice drops, stripped bare. “You’re falling apart and getting sharper at the same time, and that only happens when someone is doing something to you.”

“You don’t know that.” My voice goes thin, barely a thread, and my fingers twist together under the table where he can’t see them.

“I know what I saw today.” His eyes hold mine, unflinching. “And I know what I’ve been watching for weeks.”

“I’ve been letting things be since you moved into the house.” His hands flatten on the table. “Watching you shrink and shake and bleed in hallways—and every time I reach for you, you hand me a reason to stop.”

“Those reasons exist for a purpose, Max.” My nails press half-moons into my thighs under the table.

“That’s not good enough.” His jaw works, the tendon tightening. “Not for me, and not for you.”

“It has to be.” I hold his gaze and pour every ounce of steadiness I have left into the performance. “Please, Max—I am asking you to leave this alone.”

“I can’t do that.” The two words carry the weight of a man who has already decided, and his eyes hold mine long enough that my chest aches with it. “I’m sorry, Kylie.”

He stands. His hand grazes my shoulder as he passes, and I sit with the ghost of it burning through my shirt until the library lights flicker their warning.

Two people digging into me now—one out of cruelty, one out of something I can’t afford to name—and the walls I’m hiding behind are thinning rapidly.

The east wing corridor is empty at dusk, the building settling into the kind of quiet that makes every sound carry. I round the corner toward the exit and Mina’s voice stops me dead.

“—records from the pack clinic, everything on her—blood work, registration physical, the full file.” A pause while someone responds. “Kylie Donovan, and I need it by Friday.”

I press myself against the wall, heartbeat slamming so loud in my ears she must hear it around the corner. Mina’s voice continues, bright and efficient, and every word is another lock turning on a door my mother spent twenty-one years keeping shut.